This agrees with the statement of Miss Craik, who in 1752 was corresponding with Sir William Fleming on behalf of her incapable brother, the rector. While expressing her surprise that he should think of renting the tithes of corn, she tells him that Mr. Craik's collector had been persuaded to grant a three years' lease at £14 10s., which was too little. The salary of the collector, she adds, had been in a former year £5. The growth of corn increased seemingly in this district as the eighteenth century went by, owing no doubt to its heightened price throughout the kingdom. The tithe of it accordingly went up in value, while wool, from the decay of the cloth trade, went down. [Illustration: CHURCH WARDENS] [Illustration: FONT IN GRASMERE CHURCH. (FROM TABLE BOOK BY WM. HONE, 1827.)] PART IV THE FABRIC THE FURNITURE THE UPKEEP OF THE CHURCH CLEANING AND REPAIRS EXTRACTS FROM CHURCHWARDENS' ACCOUNTS [Illustration: Decorative] THE FABRIC Grasmere Church, as it stands at present, is itself the sole guide we have to its age and the method of its building. No document exists, prior to the Restoration, that concerns the fabric. It was then apparently the same as it is now. As one steps within the portal, and sees through the gloom its strange double nave, the rude spaces broken through the thick intersecting wall, and the massive, split, misshapen timbers that support its roof, one wonders who were its planners and builders. Here surely in this strange and original structure we see a work conceived and carried out by the very men who worshipped within it. Sturdy, strong, and self-dependent, they would seem to have asked little or no aid either in money or skill, for the rearing and decoration of their church. Yet its builders, when they came to remodel, if not to rebuild their ancient place of worship, must have known edifices of statelier plan. There was Kendal, their great centre, with a church that must always have kept abreast of the time in architectural beauty, and which--from the earliest fifteenth century at least, showed the dressed columns of stone, the soaring arches, and chantried aisles which yet remain. St. Martin's of Windermere, too, in the next parish, possessed a duly proportioned nave, chancel, and aisle; and the columns--built though they were of undressed stone--rose to support a clerestory and the evenly-timbered roof. Hawkshead again (whither the dalesmen often repaired to market or fair) owned a church that was ruder than the others, indeed--since its huge cylindrical piers support circular arches, and the timber of its roof is rough-hewn--but had a well-proportioned plan for nave and aisles. [Illustration: Old Window in the South Wall. Outside View]